Abstract
Purpose:To develop a tool for treatment planning optimization for fast radiotherapy delivered with very high‐energy electron beams (VHEE) and to compare VHEE plans to state‐of‐the‐art plans for challenging pelvis and H' N cases.Methods:Treatment planning for radiotherapy delivered with VHEE scanning pencil beams was performed by integrating EGSnrc Monte Carlo (MC) dose calculations with spot scanning optimization run in a research version of RayStation. A Matlab GUI for MC beamlet generation was developed, in which treatment parameters such as the pencil beam size and spacing, energy and number of beams can be selected. Treatment planning study for H' N and pelvis cases was performed and the effect of treatment parameters on the delivered dose distributions was evaluated and compared to the clinical treatment plans. The pelvis case with a 691cm3 PTV was treated with 2‐arc 15MV VMAT and the H' N case with four PTVs with total volume of 531cm3 was treated with 4‐arc 6MV VMAT.Results:Most studied VHEE plans outperformed VMAT plans. The best pelvis 80MeV VHEE plan with 25 beams resulted in 12% body dose sparing and 8% sparing to the bowel and right femur compared to the VMAT plan. The 100MeV plan was superior to the 150MeV plan. Mixing 100 and 150MeV improved dose sparing to the bladder by 7% compared to either plan. Plans with 16 and 36 beams did not significantly affect the dose distributions compared to 25 beam plans. The best H' N 100MeV VHEE plan decreased mean doses to the brainstem, chiasm, and both globes by 10‐42% compared to the VMAT plan.Conclusion:The pelvis and H' N cases suggested that sixteen 100MeV beams might be sufficient specifications of a novel VHEE treatment machine. However, optimum machine parameters will be determined with the presented VHEE treatment‐planning tool for a large number of clinical cases.BW Loo and P Maxim received research support from RaySearch Laboratories. E Hynning and B Hardemark are employees of RaySearch Laboratories.
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